President Ronald Reagan gives the thumbs up gesture during his acceptance speech at the 1984 Republican National Convention in Dallas.

The verdictfrom pundits is in: Barack Obama’s Inaugural speech signaled his ambition to be the “liberal Reagan,” and the Big Question about his second term is whether he’ll achieve that goal.

People mean different things by what Ronald Reagan achieved as president, and therefore what it would mean to be a “liberal Reagan.” The Prospect’s Paul Waldman says that to be like Reagan, Obama would need to “define an era that continues even after he leaves office.” At The New York Times, conservative columnist Ross Douthat talks about “a long, Reagan-like shadow over subsequent policy debates.” TheWashington Examiner’s Philip Klein considers whether Obama will match Reagan as “a president who not only wins elections (as Bill Clinton and George W. Bush did), but one who ideologically shifts the nation in his direction.” I think, however, that these are all aspects of the same idea: that Reagan (in Obama’s own words) “changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not, and a way that Bill Clinton did not.”

Here’s the problem. Ronald Reagan wasn’t really the Reagan of everyone’s imagination. So aspiring to be a “liberal Reagan” is chasing a fantasy. Worse than that—it’s a fantasy that can easily distract a president from the real things that he should be doing.

Take a look at the Reagan myth. Did Reagan “ideologically shift the nation in his direction?” If we’re talking about voters, the answer is pretty clearly no. As Northeastern political scientist Bill Mayer showed in The Changing American Mind, if anything, public opinion on many issues became more liberal, not more conservative, during Reagan’s presidency (see also a nice post from George Washington University political scientist John Sides).

Did Reagan cast a shadow over subsequent policy debates? Sure, but no more than any other two-term occupant of the Oval Office—certainly not through fundamental conservative change. The growth of government, after cuts in 1981, started back up while Reagan was still president, and it’s hard to see Reagan’s influence in such measures as the Americans with Disabilities Act (1990). Reagan was, of course, a cold warrior, but so was everyone from Truman on—even Jimmy Carter. And to the extent that Reagan was particularly bellicose, it didn’t really survive his first term (much to the consternation of 1980s anticommunists).

Did Reagan “define an era?” Well, if we all repeat it often enough, I suppose so, regardless of whether the man himself has anything to do with it.

Thinking about some of the other possibilities: It’s hard to see any bright line in which Reagan’s terms mark a change in GOP electoral success. Nor was Reagan a particularly popular president. His first term was well below average. His second term was better, but he was not as popular as Bill Clinton or Dwight Eisenhower. Reagan certainly did play an important role in the full takeover of the Republican Party by conservatives. And of course he did have his share of accomplishments in office. It’s just that most of his exaggerated reputation is hype. It’s worth noting that Bill Clinton, in 1992, ran against 12 years—not 4—of Republican presidents.

And it’s certainly worth noting that Republican winners in 1995 and, for that matter, 2011, invoked Reagan—but they didn't say that they were restoring his achievements which had atrophied under Democratic control. Because that just wasn't the case.

Why, then, the Reagan myth? Any successful two-term president has the material to build a myth around, and Reagan (unlike Ike) has happened to benefit from a group dedicated to deifying him. His strengths were rhetorical, and people who write about politics like well-crafted words (people who televise politics like well-delivered words), so his rhetorical strengths tend to be overrated. Everyone is vulnerable to fooling themselves with nostalgia: For conservatives, the Reagan presidency is a golden age to look back to, given that he’s the only even slightly successful movement-conservative president; for liberals, it’s easy to invent a golden era of progressive politics that Reagan disrupted.

What does all of this suggest for Barack Obama? That he should forget about being transformative or establishing some sort of liberal era. That’s not how politics works. Politics is about grinding it out, a bit at a time, and then fighting again tomorrow.

First of all, any attempt to generally change public opinion is probably useless; any attempt to “win” arguments about liberals versus conservatives is totally futile. Sure, give appropriate speeches and make the best arguments. Just don’t expect the electorate to change much.

Second, what lasts are serious changes in public policy. NATO lasted after Truman. The highways lasted after Ike. Civil-rights legislation and its effects lasted after Johnson. Of course, Obama has the Affordable Care Act and more already in the ledger; that’s a pretty good start. Note that we tend to attribute whatever happens to the president whether it was his doing or Congress’s (or sometimes just stuff that happens). And note, too, that it takes a while to see which pieces of policy really matter; there are still fascinating arguments about which 19th-century polices counted most, so forget about knowing anything anytime soon.

Third, the one place beyond policy where presidents can make long-lasting changes is in changing their political party. A winning, successful president might not be able to change the ideology of swing voters (who, after all, are the least likely to pay careful attention to politics or even have an ideology). But a winning, successful president can affect what strong partisans think is acceptable and unacceptable within the party. Reagan’s victory may not have changed public opinion, but after Reagan, every viable candidate for the Republican nomination for president has claimed to be a conservative and taken steps to justify that label.

Add it all up and Obama, if he wants to be a president who really changes things for the better, should … well, it’s boring and obvious, but he should mostly focus on promoting good public policy. Not fighting the good fight or talking the good talk for liberal ideals, but just getting done whatever he can get done given all the constraints that surround him. Well-implemented plans will be hard for subsequent presidents to displace. And presidents who make good policy tend to be popular, thereby ensuring that partisans seek to replace them (not only immediately, but into the future) with similar candidates. In other words, he should pretty much focus on being a good president, and let the rest of it take care of itself. No, it’s not as exciting as imagining that Obama can win arguments for a generation by choosing exactly the right words at the right time—but no one, certainly not Ronald Reagan, could do that. And it does have the benefit of being how politics really works.

Comments

Republicans need someone of recent memory to look back on and Regan provides some great soundbites. Obviously neither Bush is providing much for them and I feel like Ford is the forgotten president of recent time. Clinton is more recent, but I think that he will become the liberals Regan. We often exaggerate some of what he did, forget about what he did wrong, and ignore the fact that the man was pretty moderate. He was a good president, but he may be our real Regan.

This is a great progressive website, but the need for many writers and commenters to minimize the significance of the Reagan era is hard to stomach.

For me, the significance of Reagan is that he presided over the transition to the neoliberal economic era in the United States. Yes, it actually began during Carter's term, but it was solidified during Reagan's eight years. And yes, it was further solidified after Reagan, some would argue reaching its irreversible dominance in 1995 during the Gingrich congress. But the solid turning point was during the Reagan years.

One could certainly argue that if it hadn't been Reagan, it would have been someone else. But it was Reagan. And while I do not primarily subscribe to the Great Man Theory of history, I do grudgingly recognize Reagan's leadership abilities. Unless and until Barack Obama proves otherwise, I think it is safe to say that going back at least to after Lyndon Johnson, Reagan has exhibited the greatest level by any president since then of James MacGregor Burns's "transforming leadership." It is tragic that he did it for our political enemies, but all the more reason for "our own Reagan." (I've stated before that our Reagan was FDR, or one could say that Reagan was actually the right wing's FDR, but we need a new one)

The "liberal Reagan" or "progressive Reagan" will be one who presides over the transition to an economic structure that replaces neoliberlaism, if indeed the next structure is one that significantly improves life for the majority of working Americans (it is obviously problematic to use the term "liberal" here, since we mean it in the noble 20th century sense of the term, while in the term "neoliberal" it is meant in the sense used by classical economics). I doubt that it will be President Obama. He came to the presidency as a centrist/corporatist and while he could conceivably evolve into somthing else, I wouldn't bet on it because I think he believes in a centrist form of corporatism, even though he probably doesn't consciously apply that term to himself. While there were many progressive moments in his 2nd inaugural speech, they were mostly in the realm of progressive identity politics, not class politics. Those elements were very good to hear, but they are not what will distinguish our next transformational president.

What was transformative about Reagan was not what he did but what he said -- his idealization of the individual over the collective. Reagan made selfishness socially acceptable. When Oliver Stone's character Gordon Gekko said, "Greed is good" (1987), millions of Americans agreed. Sure, the counter-culture was robust -- obviously, Stone didn't think greed was good -- but the point is that collectivism became the counter-culture, not the dominant American political philosophy that it had been from the New Deal through the Great Society.

If Obama can swing the nation away from individualism to a kind of pragmatic collectivism, he will indeed be a great president. He chose to bury the philosophical ideas while he was getting stuff done his first two years; then he joined the deficit hawk-loons, turning himself into a small guy for a year or so. We have John Boehner & the Occupy movement to thank for giving Obama back his bearings, which came into evidence in the December 2011 Osawatomie jobs speech.

The other thing to remember is that myths take a while to develop. Just because Reagan was not a popular president doesn't mean Grover Norquist & the Mythmakers couldn't raise him up later. The only presidents who have a shot at instant popularity get it by actually being shot: Lincoln & Kennedy. (The fact that Reagan himself also suffered a near-fatal wound probably gave him a leg up, too.) There's an excellent chance that in 20 years, Obama will be at or near the top of "greatest president" polls -- and if he keeps on keeping on in the direction his inaugural address suggests, he'll deserve it.

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